Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Is James Marsden Going Hollywood...Again?

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A person can not swing a damn cat in the country music capital of Nashville, TN without knocking a celebrity over. It's not just crooners and country pop people like Taylor Swift, Alan Jackson, and Tim McGraw who own homes in Nashville. There's girl-rocker Sheryl Crow (who listed her farm in the spring of 2010 with an asking price of $7,500,000), soon to be dee-vorced former vice president/global warming do-gooder Al Gore, all the Followill boys from the Kings of Leon, Jessica Simpson (who not very successfully tried to reinvent herself as a country queen in 2008), disco diva Donna Summer, Hollywood's favorite homosexual Lance Bass, alterna-musician Ben Folds, a-list actress Reese Witherspoon, rock musician Peter Frampton, and frozen faced Aussie actress Nicole Kidman who is, of course, married to country king Keith Urban.

For the last couple of years Nashville has also been home to hard working actor James Marsden and his former actress wifey Lisa Linde who, thanks to the Nashville House Whore, we've learned recently heaved their Nashville home on to the market with an asking price of $1,399,000.

Mister Marsden, a former model for Versace, got his start in the Hollywood Shuffle not long after meeting actor turned Christian activist Kirk Cameron while on vacation in Hawaii in 1991. In the mid-1990s Mister Marsden appeared on the one season wonder Second Noah and by the early naughts had hit a professional stride with parts inZoolander and as Cyclops in the wildly successful X-Men, a role he has repeated in all three of the films in that money minting franchise. In more recent years bizzy Mister Marsden appeared in Hairspray, Enchanted, 27 Dresses, and he voiced a part in the recently released and dee-voonly named Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. He also has a regular and no doubt lucrative role in the latest incarnation of the Superman film franchise. Mister Marsden's wife Lisa Linde is–or was–an actress whose biggest role to date was on the soap story Days of Our Lives in the late 1990s. However, it seems she's spent the last 10 years more focused on making and raising babies than making movies.

By the fall of 2008 there were reports and confirmations that Mister and Missus Marsden had picked up and moved their expanding family from Los Angeles to Nashville, TN. It wasn't really a far-fetched or shocking choice given that Nashville happens to be the hometown of Missus Marsden whose father is country music songwriter Dennis Linde who penned songs sung by folks like Elvis Presley, the Dixie Chicks, Tanya Tucker, The Judds, and Garth Brooks.

Property records reveal that in February of 2008, the comely couple scooped up a secluded house in the Forest Hills area just south of downtown Nashville for which they paid $780,000. Despite and extensive eco-friendly renovation, the brick-faced split level ranch house, situated at the opposite end of the same street as the home of Al and Tipper Gore, looks on the outside like the sort of office building Your Mama imagines one might go to buy life insurance or have yer teeth worked on.

Although listing information shows the house measures 3,974 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers, the Davidson county tax man shows the Marsden crib measures 4,860 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 5 poopers. We're not sure why those numerical discrepancies exist but it may or may not have something to do with the big ol' renovation they performed on the house.

The Marsden's 2.15 acre property sits at the tail end of a leafy cul-de-sac where a steep driveway ascends to a motor court, garage, and wood framed clear glass front doors. Your Mama loves us some all-glass front doors and would love to have one installed at our house. However, the front door of our Hollywood Hills hideaway sits just 4 feet from the street and the busy-body Russian spinster sisters across the way would no doubt be all up in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter'sbizness every damn day iffin we had a glass door.

Anyhoo, the interior of the Marsden's 1975 era home has been re-worked and opened up creating a loft-like environment where one room flows freely and easily into the next. The main living space, where people are likely to gather, is a large kitchen/family room combo at the back of the house that opens out onto a large covered patio. The ebonized cabinetry in the kitchen is topped with marble–that's marble, right?–and there are all the expected accouterments including a Mac-Daddy sized stainless steel range with industrial venting hood. Your Mama appreciates that the kitchen dee-ziner included a small breakfast bar at one end of the large work island because sometimes it's nice for guests to sit around and get sauced while the hostess prepares dinner. We also appreciate that the dee-ziner didn't pull the overhead cabinetry in too tight over the sink, which had he or she done might have felt a mite claustrophobic for anyone doing the dishes.

The large family room area includes a built-in entertainment center with space for a big tee-vee and under counter wine fridge. Two sets of extra-wide wood-framed sliding glass doors open to the backyard and at the far end of the room the fireplace has been done over in a clean and crisp contemporary manner with smooth gray concrete. While we do like the two wirey sphere chandeliers in the family room we feel they're not quite the right scale for a room this size with ceilings this high and would have recommended they be twice and large as they currently are.

The generously sized master bedroom has white, white, white walls, wide-plank hardwood floors, a gently pitched ceiling, closets large enough for 27 Dresses, and an extra-wide sliding glass door that opens onto a small deck that overlooks the back yard. While the deck really isn't large or private enough for Mister or Missus Marsden to have a chaise lounge where they could sun their buns in the nood, it would be the perfect spot for our mean ol' pussy Sugar to spend the afternoon lolling in the sun and cleaning her fur.

The exterior articulation at the back of the house is complicated, haphazard looking, and so unattractive that it makes Your Mama sweat with architectural flabbergast and dismay. Listen hunnies, no one loves a covered and shaded patio for enjoying the outdoors out of the glare of the blazing sun more than Your Mama. But this large and vaulted patio covering that juts uncomfortably off the back of the house and over a gigantic concrete patio is an eyesore. For a million and four in Nashville we want–nay, require–a patio created from a natural stone not some slab of concrete that looks like the carport of a damn mobile home.

It does not appear that Mister and Missus Marsden got around to or bothered to have any work done on the landscaping, which consists of little more than a large swathe of patchy grass. Rather than get all bitchy about that, we're going to turn that lemon into lemonade and say that the barely landscaped backyard that's depressingly devoid of a single plant or flower is primed and ready for the next homeowner to exercise their green thumb and install a swimming pool.

Given that the interior of the home is stripped of all personal effects, we're guessing the Marsden family has done moved on. Of course, Your Mama don't know a Parson's table from a patio set, but iffin we were the wagering type we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that Mister and Missus Marsden will be heading back to Los Angeles where property records show they own two houses.

In May of 1998, prior to their getting hitched, Mister Mardsen forked over $454,000 for a 1,595 square foot house in a prime if not glittery neighborhood in Studio City. In April of 2004 the couple traded up for a $1,300,000 single story home with 3 bedrooms and 3 poopers in the family friendly celebrity enclave of Toluca Lake, the same neck of the Tinseltown Woods where Miley Cyrus, Steve Carell, Jenny Garth and Peter Facinelli (who listed their home this summer for $5,995,000), and many more famous folks own homes.

"...looks on the outside like the sort of office building Your Mama imagines one might go to buy life insurance or have yer teeth worked on."

On the head with that one, Mama (although I might have said it looks more like the ass end of a "garden" apartment complex in Queens).

Who knew that "eco-friendly" could become so ocular-unfriendly?

Not only is the makeover green, but so is my stomach; it takes a (mercifully) rare talent to make an ugly house uglier; tearing out what artless landscaping did exist only added insult to this grave architectural injury.

I would have left well enough alone; after all, it's Nashville ––– who wants it to look like Newark?

I found this house with more photos on the web, and it looks like they had a newer concrete driveway, retaining wall, and front steps poured. I think a carefully selected style and shade of pavers for the driveway, with a contrasting natural stone retaining wall and steps between the driveway and brick on the house, and the new landscaping design that you suggested could go a long way toward softening the home's appearance and mitigating the office building look. I'd also change all the trim from dark brown to a medium spice brown to give it a bit of a warm punch, brighten it up, and create more visual interest. Right now it just looks drab from every direction you view it.